Count me as one. I was two, my brother one, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. My brother and I were born in Honolulu, Our paternal grandfather, a Scots immigrant, was…
Posts published in “Essays”
In December of 2001 my dog Jasper the Wonderdog and I were walking up a street called Slalom, approximately 6,500 feet above sea level in the Sierra, on the outskirts of the town of Truckee.…
Most people couldn't recall a time like it. For months on end in the midwest of 1927, and across much of the country, it rained steadily, sometimes in volumes not before seen. Southern Illinois received…
One sunny San Francisco morning in the 1990s I was sitting in my office trying to decide which pile of papers and journals and telephone messages piled on my desk to tackle first, when the…
I once described my family as “six abrasive oddballs” led by “parents from Neptune and three siblings I never knew. All the kids ignored each other except when tormenting younger ones, while mom and dad…
I was a delegate representing the Noe Valley to the founding of the Peace and Freedom Party at the Richmond Auditorium in 1968. For the three days that strange assembly had gathered to organize opposition…
On June 22, 1938 thousands of boxing fans poured through the turnstiles at Yankee Stadium. Most couldn’t wait to to boo Max Schmeling, the German fighter they viewed as Hitler’s white hope against African-American heavyweight…